Monday, July 11, 2016

Monday Is for Mothers: Nancy Elizabeth "Nannie" Freeman, 1857 - 1934

As I was pulling together information about her father H.H. Freeman for last Wednesday's post, I realized that I hadn't looked at my maternal great grandmother Nannie Freeman Warren yet.

[Detail from "Colton's Alabama" by Joseph Hutchins Colton, published in New York by Colton and Co. c. 1861,

from the W. S. Hoole Special Collections Library, available through Alabama Maps.]

Nannie was 12 when her family moved from Cotton Valley in Macon County, Alabama, to Johnson County, Texas in 1869 and that's where she's found in the next two U.S. Censuses, living with her parents.

Nannie's older sister Narcissa Freeman McBryde died in 1871, leaving a husband and two young sons and her younger sister Julia Green Freeman died at the age of 20 in 1881.

Nannie didn't marry until December 15, 1885, when she was 28 years old. Her husband , 31-year-old James Chappell "J.C." Warren was a resident of Douglasville in Cass County, several hundred miles away from her home but probably knew each other because both their families had previously lived in Cotton Valley. He was the third son of Martha Heath Hardy and J.T.S. Warren.

[County map of the state of Texas. Showing also portions of the adjoining states and territories. (with) Plan of Galveston and vicinity. Copyright by S. Augustus Mitchell 1884. Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection]

[Locations of Douglas and Cleburne. Detail of above map.]

Nannie and J.C. set up housekeeping in Cleburne in Johnson County where their first child Mattie Lizzie was born in 1886 and died just short of her third birthday in 1889. In the following ten years three more children were born: Hill Freeman in 1891, my great grandfather James Chappell Jr. in 1897 and their only daughter Mary Anna in 1899.

Both of their sons served in the U.S. Navy during World War I. Hill Freeman ended up living in Connecticut for the rest of his life while my grandfather returned to Texas and resumed farming with his father.

On August 23, 1923, James Chappell Warren, Jr., died of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix and Nannie was the source of the information on his death certificate. Less than a year later on February 14, 1924, J.C. succumbed to lobar pneumonia following influenza and once again Nannie provided the information for his death record.

Six years later Nannie was living with her daughter Mary, her husband A. Harolld Nance and their
19-month-old daughter Mary Hal in Justice Township in Young County, about 100 miles northwest of Johnson County, which is where she died on April 6, 1934.

In death she joined her parents, several brothers and sisters, her husband and two of her children in the Cleburne City Cemetery (formerly known as the Confederate Memorial Park) which is now called the Cleburne Memorial Cemetery.

From what I've been told my father had very little, if any, contact with his father's people, including his grandmother Nannie who died when he was nearly 11.

*Their oldest son Henry H. but always known as Hill Freeman Warren was probably away studying medicine at Vanderbilt University by then.